


Candy Red

by TaPanda



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Blood, Bloodplay, Cutting, Death, Mental Breakdown, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, accidental suicide, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaPanda/pseuds/TaPanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat finally realizes he can find a way to escape the nightmares that come with killing his best friend for the sake of all the others.  That answer lies with the candy crimson that runs through his own veins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candy Red

Karkat giggled, honestly giggled again, feeling the liquid spurt and shoot out yet again, watching its crimson arc. So mesmerizing. But the edges were getting fuzzy. His world faded into black, leaving Karkat alone pooled in his own red sticky blood, left sleeve pushed up past his elbow, ragged cuts with strips of flesh missing striping his forearm. A pile of discarded bandages lay in the corner, and the claws on his right hand were caked with blood, slowly drying. His last lucid thought consisted of him realizing that this time, he would actually escape the honking and be peaceful.

 

Everything had been normal before the kids had entered the veil. Well, as normal as things could be when someone’s best friend goes psycho, another good friend goes mad with jealousy and tries to kill everyone, and everything goes shithive maggots. Maybe it was all fine until about that part. That would make a lot more sense. But Karkat had done the foul deed, doing Gamzee in. And as he sat there, head in hands, still covered in the dark indigo blood despite the long hours that had passed since then, he first met John and the other humans.

Eventually everyone settled into a routine that didn’t piss Karkat off to extremes. The humans took some rooms a few of the departed trolls had been using as their own, and after a while it seemed almost routine.

At least, it was until John decided he should start cooking for all of them. Karkat had been coerced into helping him with preparation, and was grumbling in the kitchen, carefully peeling potatoes. Karkat… wasn’t sure if he was okay, really. Maybe he was, but something painful pulled in the back of his mind whenever he spied a Faygo bottle. And in his dreams… the nightmares had gone from what was already bad to endless honking. While Karkat didn’t normally sleep in the first place, he kept to only passing out when completely necessary, and would wake up in cold sweats.

Karkat was pulled out of his current thoughts when John took a sharp intake of breath suddenly, dropping the knife he had been using to chop carrots quickly on the work surface. “Karkat, can you grab the bandages in the bathroom? I need to patch this up.” John held his finger, red welling to the surface in thick red globes.

“JOHN…” Karkat made no motion to move, and if anything leaned closer to John. He quickly grabbed the other boy’s hand, inspecting it closely. “JOHN YOU BLEED RED?”

John looked at him, puzzled, and withdrew his hand. Turning the sink on to wash out the cut, he nodded. “Well, yeah, all of us humans do, why?”  
Karkat just stared at him speechless. “Karkat, bandages?” John sighed, looking at the troll. “Look, if for some reason you don’t believe me go ask Rose or something, I have to go put something on this so I don’t bleed in the food.”

 

Later that night, Karkat found himself approaching Rose and Jade rather nervously. Rose cocked her head curiously at the troll as he neared them. Jade seemed not to notice, rather too busy watching something on her laptop screen.

“Karkat it is not often you seek me for advice. I’m sure you’re afraid I’ll ultimately uncover some big secret of yours from your past, but nonetheless this is pleasant.”

Karkat cleared his throat. “HEY LISTEN FUCKING GREAT LALONDE BUT IS IT TRUE?”

Jade looked up from her computer, closing it. “Uhh, Karkat, is what true?” She smiled up at him, but looked even more curious than John did before Karkat had let him try troll popcorn.

His eyes swept the room quickly, and the troll bent down close to speak to the humans. “I MEAN ABOUT… HUMANS HAVING RED BLOOD?” His eyes again scanned the room, but then fell right back on the pair.

Rose hid her look of surprise well, but Jade’s mouth gaped open. “Of course it is silly, here look!” With that, she was off, running out of the room quickly. Rose just raised her eyebrows at the male, shooting him the ‘wait and see’ look. Just as swiftly as Jade disappeared, she reappeared with a set of pins. “I got these from Kanaya, but I don’t think she’ll mind if just two of her pins are missing…” The girl handed the second pin to Rose, who took it delicately in her forefinger and thumb.

“As you can see…” with that both girls pricked themselves, letting Karkat see the red bead fighting its way to the surface of their skin. “Humans do indeed have red blood coursing through our veins.”

Karkat looked around. “DOES THAT MEAN… DOES EVERYONE KNOW?” And slightly after, he added, “AND STRIDER TOO?”  
Rose and Jade both nodded at the same time, and then both went back to their previous tasks, their work obviously completed. Karkat walked away from them in a daze, a lot on his mind.

 

And that is how the troll found himself on the floor of his respiteblock, a shitty razor Dave had insisted they alchemize in his hand. His left sleeve was rolled up, his wrist proffered in between his knees.

Karkat knew that others had red blood too.

And so did the other trolls. That meant…

That meant he could look at his own blood, just this once.

With that, he sliced a clean line across his wrist, feeling the blood spill quickly out of the cut. He raised his arm closer to his face, and experimentally licked. It had a slightly iron taste, but troll blood was only supposed to be appetizing during the heat of hate relationships.  
Karkat put the razor carefully down on the ground, making sure it couldn’t be damaged. He dipped his index finger in the red then pulled it away, dragging the finger against the ground, drawing minute patterns.

Karkat had stopped then, realizing that if anyone found him, they’d stop him and probably have Rose and Kanaya talk to him for long hours, figuring out why he did that. But he was never secure with his blood until then. Now, that he knew if the others weren’t harmed for their blood and he wouldn’t be harmed for his, he was fascinated by it. He was a mutant, that was clear, but it was something he was never secure about. And now, he wanted to explore it, wanted to see it every second he got. He wanted to escape. Because for those seconds, he could forget the indigo blood on his hands and only hear the pounding of his pulse in his ears. The honking was gone.

 

Karkat continued slitting small portions of his skin open every few days to stare at the color inside. Nobody knew yet, nobody would have to know. At least, nobody knew until the day he overdid it.

The nubby-horned troll knew he shouldn’t cut his wrist again, knew that when the blood stopped flowing that should mean he was done. But he just couldn’t stop there. All that crimson candy blood just stuck inside him where he couldn’t see was unfair and he needed to see it now. So he cut again, and again. And the red poured out of the cuts more and more, and he felt a grin crawl up his face as more and more drops welled up and joined the growing pool on the floor.

At some point, Terezi and Dave burst in, Dave yelling for assistance, Terezi running over to steal his razor. Karkat remembered John running up, then stopping dead in the doorway. He fell on his knees after a few steps in the room, and Jade dropped beside him, a hand on his shoulder. When Kanaya and Aradia arrived, they ushered everyone else out of the room, but Karkat just sat watching them.

He didn’t realize until later exactly what he had been trying to do to himself, not until he was bandaged up and all the razors on the base had been destroyed. Both the male and female humans agreed they would try to figure out the code of a motorized version, and so they thought they had stopped Karkat from doing more harm to himself. John and Jade tried to avoid him as much as possible in separated situations, and usually were with each other or someone else just to ask him basic questions. Kanaya and Rose both offered to talk to him about whatever he wanted, but Karkat could barely hear them. Part of the reason was because he just lacked the energy to function after what he had done. The other part was that he was already trying to figure out how he would be able to view the candy red liquid running just underneath his skin. He wanted to be free, he wanted to be cleansed.

 

While the razors were destroyed, Karkat continued doing things.

First time they caught him with a sharp knife from the kitchen. This happened three times before all the knives were put in locked cabinets, and Karkat wasn’t given the key. Next went the forks, and by the time the many three and four-pronged blood spots were found on his arm, nobody was comfortable talking to Karkat anymore. It wasn’t that Karkat had a problem. It was far from the sort. But he had never been able to focus on his blood so much, and the intoxicating feeling was never enough.

With the cutlery hidden away, Karkat became desperate.

A rather angled sculpture.

A thick coil of wires.

Broken shards of glass.

The trolls and kids worried about this every day. There was no way someone could talk to Karkat on their own. There was no way John or Jade would be able to hold it together. Sollux and Jade had at this point made a body scanner, and Karkat wasn’t allowed out of his room unless a few others were with him.

But Karkat had figured out how to fix this. He was ready to tear off his bandages from the last time they caught him.

He just wanted to see crimson.

 

Karkat faintly heard Terezi’s scream as he woke up, hair and face sticky. He looked at his arms and weakly started giggling again. But there still wasn’t enough red. There just wasn’t. He couldn’t escape the indigo blood, and he needed to see more. More red, more red.  
So he opened his mouth, snapped his jaw shut, and let the crimson fill his vision for one final time.


End file.
